1. Definitions

2. Examples

3. Hadamard spaces

4. Properties of spaces

5. See also

6. References

In mathematics, a space, where is a real number, is a specific type of metric space. Intuitively, triangles in a space are "slimmer" than corresponding "model triangles" in a standard space of constant curvature . In a space, the curvature is bounded from above by . A notable special case is ; complete spaces are known as Hadamard spaces after the French mathematician Jacques Hadamard.

Originally, Aleksandrov called these spaces “ domain”.

The terminology was coined by Mikhail Gromov in 1987 and is an acronym for Élie Cartan, Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov and Victor Andreevich Toponogov (although Toponogov never explored curvature bounded above in publications).

Definitions

For a real number , let denote the unique complete simply connected surface (real 2-dimensional Riemannian manifold) with constant curvature . Denote by the diameter of , which is if and for .

Let be a geodesic metric space, i.e. a metric space for which every two points can be joined by a geodesic segment, an arc length parametrized continuous curve , whose length

is precisely . Let be a triangle in with geodesic segments as its sides. is said to satisfy the inequality if there is a comparison triangle in the model space , with sides of the same length as the sides of , such that distances between points on are less than or equal to the distances between corresponding points on .

The geodesic metric space is said to be a space if every geodesic triangle in with perimeter less than satisfies the inequality. A (not-necessarily-geodesic) metric space is said to be a space with curvature if every point of has a geodesically convex neighbourhood. A space with curvature may be said to have non-positive curvature.

Examples

• Any space is also a space for all . In fact, the converse holds: if is a space for all , then it is a space.
• The -dimensional Euclidean space with its usual metric is a space. More generally, any real inner product space (not necessarily complete) is a space; conversely, if a real normed vector space is a space for some real , then it is an inner product space.
• The -dimensional hyperbolic space with its usual metric is a space, and hence a space as well.
• The -dimensional unit sphere is a space.
• More generally, the standard space is a space. So, for example, regardless of dimension, the sphere of radius (and constant curvature ) is a space. Note that the diameter of the sphere is (as measured on the surface of the sphere) not (as measured by going through the centre of the sphere).
• The punctured plane is not a space since it is not geodesically convex (for example, the points and cannot be joined by a geodesic in with arc length 2), but every point of does have a geodesically convex neighbourhood, so is a space of curvature .
• The closed subspace of given by

equipped with the induced length metric is not a space for any .

• Any product of spaces is . (This does not hold for negative arguments.)

Hadamard spaces

As a special case, a complete CAT(0) space is also known as a Hadamard space; this is by analogy with the situation for Hadamard manifolds. A Hadamard space is contractible (it has the homotopy type of a single point) and, between any two points of a Hadamard space, there is a unique geodesic segment connecting them (in fact, both properties also hold for general, possibly incomplete, CAT(0) spaces). Most importantly, distance functions in Hadamard spaces are convex: if are two geodesics in X defined on the same interval of time I, then the function given by

is convex in t.

Properties of spaces

Let be a space. Then the following properties hold:

• Given any two points (with if ), there is a unique geodesic segment that joins to ; moreover, this segment varies continuously as a function of its endpoints.
• Every local geodesic in with length at most is a geodesic.
• The -balls in of radius less than are (geodesically) convex.
• The -balls in of radius less than are contractible.
• Approximate midpoints are close to midpoints in the following sense: for every and every there exists a such that, if is the midpoint of a geodesic segment from to with and

then .

• It follows from these properties that, for the universal cover of every space is contractible; in particular, the higher homotopy groups of such a space are trivial. As the example of the -sphere shows, there is, in general, no hope for a space to be contractible if .
• An -dimensional space equipped with the -dimensional Hausdorff measure satisfies the condition in the sense of John Lott, Cédric Villani, and Karl-Theodor Sturm.{{Citation needed|date=December 2013}}

See also

• Cartan–Hadamard theorem

References

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• {{cite arXiv |last1= Alexander|first1= Stephanie|last2=Kapovitch|first2=Vitali|last3=Petrunin|first3=Anton|eprint= 1701.03483|title= Invitation to Alexandrov geometry: CAT[0] spaces|class= math.DG}}
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